LeBron and Trump step out of bounds: Doug McIntyre

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Demonstrators hold up photos of LeBron James grimacing during a rally at the Southorn Playground in Hong Kong, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019. Protesters in Hong Kong have thrown basketballs at a photo of LeBron James and chanted their anger about comments the Los Angeles Lakers star made about free speech during a rally in support of NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, whose tweet in support of the Hong Kong protests touched off a firestorm of controversy in China. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

LeBron James and the Lakers were in China for a pair of pre-season contests against the Brooklyn Nets when Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the Hong Kong protesters engaged in a tense and violent confrontation with their government.

“Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong,” wrote Morey.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for James, the NBA or the Communist Chinese government. Two meaningless basketball games were suddenly freighted with profound meaning.

As a noted social justice warrior — and the international face of the NBA — James was the obvious person to ask for a comment.

“I believe he (Morey) wasn’t educated on the situation at hand,” James told reporters, proving King James is the one who needs an education.

The 70-years of Communist rule in China has been sustained by relentlessly crushing fundamental human rights, including murder and genocide on a scale only Hitler and Stalin imagined.

Tens of millions of people perished either directly or as a result of reckless policies instituted by Mao and his henchmen. But what’s repression and murder when TV rights, shoe and jersey sales are on the line? When push came to shove, LeBron essentially told the people of Hong Kong to “shut up and dribble.”

In fairness, it isn’t just LeBron James who needs an education on China.

It’s possible LeBron is genuinely ignorant of the bloody history of that ancient and remarkable land. Thousands of American college students walked around with Mao’s “Little Red Book” in the ‘60s or dined out at Venice Beach’s Mao’s Kitchen. Would anyone think of eating at a Hitler’s Hideaway?

There were egregious violations of basic civil liberties during the McCarthy era, but the Soviet Union and Red China represented an existential threat to the Western world and freedom itself. Those who lived under its yoke will never forget. The Hong Kong protesters today wave the American flag, not the Russian, North Korean, Cuban or Venezuelan.

LeBron’s blunder will haunt him while playing road games. But once safely back at Staples Center, as long as he makes his shots and leads the Lakers to the promised land, the cheers will wash away the stink. In the grand scheme of things, he’s just a ballplayer, a great one, but that doesn’t make him a great thinker on geo-political matters.

That’s not the case with Donald Trump. He’s president and what he thinks matters greatly.

Against the advice of everybody, President Trump gave the Turks the OK to wipe out their ancient enemies, the Kurds. The beneficiaries of this betrayal of our ally in the fight against ISIS are the despotic regimes of Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al Assad, and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Trump justifies this betrayal by hiding behind our soldiers, claiming he’s protecting American troops. But there is no way to spin past the ugly reality: The president of the United States handed our enemies a victory inconceivable without his active involvement.

Feeling the heat (for once) from his own party, the president released the letter he sent to Turkey’s Erdogan after what everyone told him would happen did happen. Written in the prose style of a comic book super-villain, the president threatened Erdogan: “I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy — and I will.” To recap, Donald Trump opened the door to the murder of the Kurds and then threatened to destroy a NATO ally’s economy. Fox News reports the Turkish president tossed Trump’s letter in a wastepaper basket.

A few days later the president crowed about his tremendous success, a 120-hour cease fire that gives the Turks everything they wanted and the Kurds nothing. Please, spare us more victories like this one!

Meanwhile, the world is now on notice the word of the United States is meaningless, making Russia’s hand that much stronger in the Middle East and elsewhere. If a Democrat had done these things, talk radio heads would explode.

I’m two aspirins into writing this column and I’m sure your head is throbbing as well. While the Lakers have a 6’8”, 250-lb. headache who goes by the name of LeBron James, the United States of America has a migraine who goes by the name Donald Trump.

Doug McIntyre is host of "McIntyre in the Morning" on 790 KABC in Los Angeles, heard weekdays from 5-10 a.m. He also hosted "Red Eye Radio" both locally and nationally and has been talking into a microphone for 20 years. He writes a weekly column for the Southern California News Group.

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